1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to signature verification and authentication systems whereby to provide security in financial transactions, access to buildings and areas, and the like, and more particularly to methods and apparatus to be employed in such systems, including cryptographically encoded documents, apparatus for producing such documents, and apparatus for utilizing such documents in the verification and authentication of signatures made by authorized users of such documents.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Methods and apparatus for the verification (sometimes miscalled "authentication") of handwritten signatures in order to provide security in financial transactions, access to buildings and areas, and the like, are known in the prior art. Such prior art methods and apparatus are disclosed for example, in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,676,000 (hereinafter "Mayer-Dobbins '000"); 3,781,109 (hereinafter "Mayer-Dobbins '109"); 3,178,993 (hereinafter "Ferris"); 3,166,625 (hereinafter "Brumley"); 3,955,178 (hereinafter "Warfel"); 3,620,590 (hereinafter "Barker"); 3,579,186 (hereinafter "Johnson"); and 3,806,704 (hereinafter "Shinal").
The systems of these prior art patents all suffer from one of two disadvantages: (1) they involve elaborate and expensive communication networks for the transmission of comparison data, with which to compare signatures on financial documents or identification documents, from data stores located at considerable distances from the points of presentation of the documents, or (2) they provide comparison data cryptographically recorded on documents, whereby signatures made by authorized users thereof may be verified by comparison, but do not provide any means of authenticating the comparison data, i.e., determining whether the comparison data cryptographically recorded on the document was made from an authentic signature of the authorized user of the document.
As will be evident to those having ordinary skill in the art, informed by the present disclosure, the addition to prior art signature verification systems of new comparison data authenticating means, as defined above, provides verification and authentication of signatures on documents, as the terms "verification" and "authentication" are defined in current banking and security practice.
As is also well known to those having ordinary skill in the art, a serious need exists for systems for both verifying and authenticating handwritten signatures of authorized users of documents such as bank checks, savings account passbooks, credit cards, identification cards, and the like, especially in the banking industry where banks and other check processing facilities are faced with the problem of examining many thousands of checks per day and detecting and returning fraudulent checks within a very short period of time, sometimes as little as twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It is anticipated that this burden will be considerably exacerbated in the near future, when certain check processing systems now under test or consideration are adopted by the banking industry. Among these systems are those now called "bulk-filing, cycle-sorting", and "check truncation" or "check safekeeping".